V is for Villers-Bretonneux

25 April is ANZAC day, a day to remember the Australians and New Zealanders who served their country in the armed forces.

William Stanley Plowright (1893-1917) was my husband’s first cousin twice removed. He was killed in action at Lagnicourt on 27 March 1917 and is listed on the memorial at Villers-Bretonneux. He has no known grave.

Villers-Bretonneux, is a village in the Somme département of France, 16 kilometres east of Amiens on the straight main road to St Quentin. Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery is about 2 kilometres north of the village. Villers–Bretonneux Australian National Memorial lists the names of 10,762 soldiers of the Australian Imperial Force with no known grave who were killed between 1916, when Australian forces arrived in France and Belgium, and the end of fighting in 1918.

Australian War memorial photograph image id C00470. Photographer Ernest Charles Barnes, April 1917. Description: Two unidentified soldiers stand amid the shattered buildings in the French village of Lagnicourt, which was captured by the Australians in late March 1917 as the Germans withdrew towards the Hindenburg Line. The Germans heavily shelled the village as they retreated. (From the collection of 704 Driver Ernest Charles Barnes who served with the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, 21st Howitzer Brigade and 2nd Field Artillery Brigade.)

William was the seventh of eleven children of William John Plowright (1859-1914) and Harriet Jane née Hosking (1861-1946). William’s brothers appear not to have enlisted.